Chicago in the 1890s was a place of mass industrialization, rapid growth, and a large immigrant population. It was a city dominated by railroads, steel mills, slaughterhouses, and garment factories. These factories caused major pollution, which heavily affected the people who worked in them and lived in the city. Most factory workers lived in tenement housing. Pollution and over-congestion led to the rapid spread of illnesses, which was made worse by a lack of sanitation and organized public health care.

One of that decade’s most prominent events was the Columbian Exposition (aka the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair). The Exposition’s planners hoped to make Chicago more popular and help give the city a more positive image. However, the building of the Fair relied on transitory labor that took advantage of migrant workers, with many dying in the process of construction due to accidents. Many people moved to the city from rural areas to get industrial jobs, and during that year, jobs tied to the Fair. This made these laborers vulnerable, which contributed to the notoriety of Chicago’s crime history.

Very few Chicago criminals are as well known as H.H. Holmes, America’s first major (urban!) serial killer, with his so-called “Murder Palace” hotel in Engelwood. It was at this hotel that many of his murders were believed to have taken place. However, much of the lore surrounding Holmes comes from sensationalist news reporting. He sometimes claimed to have killed over 200 people, but most likely actually killed closer to 9 or 10, with only 4 confirmed.

Through stories and urban legends like these, Chicago’s dark and bloody reputation grew.

Hull-House’s Ghostly History

While it has not been presented or discussed often here at the Museum, Hull-House’s extensive supernatural history is well-known within the paranormal community. The Hull mansion was not a space where violence or violent deaths took place. It was built in 1856 as a summer home by the wealthy land and real estate developer Charles J. Hull. The house survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 thanks to its location on the outskirts of the city - just far enough to be out of reach. There were only two notable events of death that took place there. The first was of Millicent Hull, Charles Hull’s wife, of an unspecified illness in her bedroom in 1860. The second was the death of a young woman named Irene Donner, who was shot outside of the settlement by her former fiance. In spite of the settlement’s mostly innocuous history, ghost stories about the space persist.

Some of the most notable hauntings include ghost children, who are said to be heard running in the upstairs corridor and in the courtyard (sometimes called “the fountain girls”). Also in the courtyard is said to be a portal to Hell - a circular concrete slab that was the location of a fountain in the past. There have been reports of monks being seen in and around the mansion.

The mansion’s most renowned ghost, however, is its resident Lady in White. There are different categories of common ghost stories told around the world. One of the most popular apparitions is the “Lady in White” - a woman who died tragically and unfulfilled, usually seen wearing a white dress. Some popular examples are stories about ghost brides, La Llorona, and Chicago’s own Resurrection Mary. Hull-House’s Lady in White is said to be none other than Millicent Hull. When Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr began renting at Hull-House, they were not in full possession of the mansion, and the concurrent tenants told stories about how Millicent haunted her former bedroom (often cited as being Jane Addams’ room). Many claimed to see her, and the story was well-known, but she was generally considered harmless. 

Jane Addams also writes about there being a belief that the attic was haunted (possibly also by Millicent) :

“It had a half-skeptical reputation for a haunted attic, so far respected by the tenants living on the second floor that they always kept a large pitcher full of water on the attic stairs. Their explanation of this custom was so incoherent that I was sure it was a survival of the belief that a ghost could not cross running water, but perhaps that interpretation was only my eagerness for finding folklore.” - Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House

The Devil Baby

The most notorious of Hull-House’s reported supernatural residents is the Devil Baby. One day, to the Hull-House Residents’ shock, a group of women showed up at the settlement demanding to see it.

“The knowledge of the existence of the Devil Baby burst upon the residents of Hull-House one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the door, demanded that he be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like, with his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears and diminutive tail; moreover, the Devil Baby had been able to speak as soon as he was born and was most shockingly profane. 

“The Italian version, with a hundred variations, dealt with a pious Italian girl married to an atheist. Her husband vehemently tore a holy picture from the bedroom wall, saying that he would quite as soon have a devil in the house as that; whereupon the devil incarnated himself in her coming child. As soon as the Devil Baby was born, he ran about the table shaking his finger in deep reproach at his father, who finally caught him and in fear and trembling brought him to Hull-House. When the residents there, in spite of the baby’s shocking appearance, wishing to save his soul, took him to church for baptism, they found that the shawl was empty and the Devil Baby, felling from the holy water, ran lightly over the backs of the pews. 

“The Jewish version, again with variations, was to the effect that the father of six daughters had said before the birth of a seventh child that he would rather have a devil in the house than another girl, whereupon the Devil Baby promptly appeared. 

“Save for a red automobile which occasionally figured in the story, and a stray cigar which, in some versions, the newborn child snatched from his father’s lips, the tale might have been fashioned a thousand years ago.”  - Jane Addams, “The Devil Baby at Hull-House”, 1916

Subsequently the baby was said to have been taken to Hull House, where it was kept locked in the attic and hidden from the public. The community’s insistence on the existence of the Devil Baby went on for six weeks, with Hull-House Residents finding themselves rebuffing requests and demands to see it day and night. People lined up down the street in hopes of proving its existence, often offering money or begging.

Jane Addams was fascinated by the 19th Ward’s obsession with the rumored satanic child. She wrote extensively about it, reflecting on where the fascination might be coming from. Addams was observant and loved to hear people’s stories, which she often recounted in her own writing, and this enabled her to study the effects of the Devil Baby craze. Every type of person who came to see it seemed to have deep-seated reasons for wanting to.

That the old women who came to visit the Devil Baby believed that the story would secure them a hearing at home, was evident, and as they prepared themselves with every detail of it, their old faces shone with a timid satisfaction. In the midst of their double bewilderment, both that the younger generation were walking in such stranger paths and that no one would listen to them, for one moment there flickered up that last hope of a disappointed life, that it may at least serve as a warning while affording material for exciting narrations.

The story of the Devil Baby, evolved to-day as it might have been centuries before in response to the imperative needs of anxious wives and mothers, recalled the theory that woman first fashioned the fairy-story, that combination of wisdom and romance, in an effort to tame her mate and to make him a better father to her children, until such stories finally became a rude creed for domestic conduct, softening the treatment that men accorded to women. 

Because the Devil Baby embodied an underserved wrong to a poor mother, whose tender child had been claimed by the forces of evil, his merely reputed presence had power to attract to Hull-House hundreds of women who had been humbled and disgraced by their children; mothers of the feeble-minded, of the vicious, of the criminal, of the prostitute.  

In their talk it was as if their long role of maternal apology and protective reticence has at last broken down; as if they could speak out freely because for once a man responsible for an ill-begotten child had been ‘met up with’ and had received his deserts. Their sinister version of the story was that the father of the Devil Baby had married without confessing a hideous crime committed years before, thus basely deceiving both his innocent young bride and the good priest who performed the solemn ceremony; that the sin had become incarnate in his child which, to the horror of the young and trusting mother, had been born with all the outward aspects of the devil himself. - Jane Addams, “The Long Road of Woman’s Memory”

Jane Addams believed that the Devil Baby story was a tool for women to express themselves, giving them louder voices in their homes and communities. It may be that it created a space for older women to have a story to share and reestablish, to some extent, their matriarchal influence within the family. The importance of elder matriarchs had begun to dwindle as generations passed, as did their influence as keepers of memories, knowledge, and wisdom. It also often served as a validation for women who may have felt that they were disgraced in society by the actions or conditions of their children. It may have been a callout from abused and mistreated women to condemn or warn their husbands that their actions can have disastrous consequences to their families. The story posited the husband’s mistreatment or wrongdoing as the source of the problem, and not the wife’s perceived “failings”. Women were able to reflect and externalize their experiences through stories that resonated within the community.

Hull-House’s Hauntings in the Modern World

Hull-House’s ghost stories are still widely-shared today. In the case of the Devil Baby story, many claim it’s still alive, lurking in the attic, while others say only its spirit remains to haunt the space. Modern ghost-hunters, paranormal investigators, and ghost tour attendees contact the museum regularly, wanting to carry out investigations or overnight stays. Lurid, exaggerated versions of the mansion’s lore are passed around eagerly online through forums and articles. After over a century, Chicagoans are still entranced by the tales of ghosts and demons, even at such a place of hope, reform, and cultural celebration. This year, we as an institution seek to reclaim and re-envision the way we talk about Hull-House’s paranormal history. The stories themselves are fun and eerie, and they create vivid snapshots of what Hull-House Neighbors experienced at the turn of the century. Join us for our October event series - which includes evening ghost tours, film screenings, and family trick-or-treating and storytime events. Help us keep Hull-House’s ghostly spirit alive!

Further Reading:

“The Devil Baby at Hull-House” by Jane Addams, published in The Atlantic in 1916

The Long Road of Woman’s Memory by Jane Addams

Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams